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Alastair Campbell said he would not “underestimate” how much the government’s handling of the situation in Gaza has led people to question “what is Labour about?”.
He was speaking after former Labour MP Zarah Sultana announced she was resigning from Keir Starmer’s party and would “co-lead the founding of a new party” with the ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Coventry South MP also accused the government of being an “active participant in genocide” in Gaza, in her statement posted on X.
Campbell, the former Downing Street director of communications under Tony Blair, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
There feels to me to be a gap between the scale of the challenges facing the country as the public feel them, and the sorts of policy responses coming forward.
According to the PA news agency, he added:
Politics isn’t just about the economy, it isn’t just about public services … I wouldn’t underestimate how much the government’s handling of Gaza has really played into this sense of ‘what is Labour about? What is Labour for’?
And it’s not that people think the Labour government can solve every problem in the world, but when I talk about a national narrative, it’s about every situation that you’re in, feeling that there’s a project that is rooted in your values, and that is what’s being communicated over the medium and the long term.
He added:
The reason why the welfare rebellion, I think, happened in the way that it did, was because a lot of the Labour MPs came in and thought, well, yeah, I get the government’s got to fix the economy, but I really didn’t come here to make poor people poorer … that messaging has got to be completely fixed in year two.
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Updated at 09.42 BST
Addressing recent political turmoil, Keir Starmer said he will always “carry the can” as leader after coming under fire over a climbdown on welfare reforms and that he would “always take responsibility” when asked questions. The prime minister told the BBC Radio 4 podcast Political Thinking With Nick Robinson:
When things go well … the leader gets the plaudits, but when things don’t go well, it is really important that the leader carries the can – and that’s what I will always do.
Starmer also backed Rachel Reeves and said she would be chancellor “for a very long time to come”, after the politician was visibly tearful in the House of Commons on Wednesday after a U-turn to welfare reform plans that put an almost £5bn hole in her plans. Reeves said it was a “personal matter” which had upset her ahead of prime minister’s questions.
The government had seen off the threat of a major Commons defeat over the legislation on Tuesday after shelving plans to restrict eligibility for the personal independence payment (pip).
Starmer said he cannot “pretend … that wasn’t a tough day”, and stressed the welfare system “isn’t working for the people that matter to me”.
“In the world that isn’t politics, it is commonplace for people to look again at a situation and judge it by the circumstances as they now are and make a decision accordingly,” he said of the changes. Starmer added:
And that is common sense, it’s pragmatic, and it’s a reflection of who I am. It was important that we took our party with us, that we got it right. And Labour politicians come into public life because they care deeply about these issues.
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Starmer says he has a good relationship with Trump because they both ‘care about family’
Keir Starmer said he has a good relationship with US president Donald Trump because they both “care about family”, reports the PA news agency.
The prime minister told the BBC Radio 4 podcast Political Thinking With Nick Robinson it was “in the national interest” for the two men to connect. He said:
We are different people and we’ve got different political backgrounds and leanings, but we do have a good relationship and that comes from a numbers of places.
I think I do understand what anchors the president, what he really cares about. For both of us, we really care about family and there’s a point of connection there.
Starmer said in the interview to mark a year in office he has a “good personal relationship” with Trump, and revealed the first time they spoke was after the then-presidential candidate was shot at a campaign rally in July last year.
US president Donald Trump and UK prime minister Keir Starmer shake hands at a press conference at the White House in February 2025. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
He said Trump had returned the phone call a few days after the prime minister’s brother Nick had died on Boxing Day.
Starmer said he visited his 60-year-old brother before and after the general election during his cancer treatment. He said:
It’s really hard to lose your brother to cancer. I wanted fiercely to protect him. And that’s why both before the election and after the election, I went secretly to see him at home, secretly to see him in hospital. He was in intensive care for a long time.
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Updated at 09.19 BST
Yvette Cooper welcomed reports that French police had intervened in French waters to stop a small boat setting off across the Channel.
Responding to a report from the BBC’s Today programme that officers had slashed at a boat with a knife while it was in shallow waters off the French coast, the home secretary said:
That is a different strategy, and that is welcome that it’s taking action in the shallow waters, but we want broader action.
But this is something that will take time to implement, but is on its way going through the French system at the moment.
I want to see this happen as urgently as possible, and I think the French interior minister does as well.
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Migrants arriving on small boats where a child has died should face prosecution, says Cooper
Every migrant who arrives on a small boat where a child has died should face prosecution, the home secretary has said, according to the PA news agency.
Yvette Cooper told the BBC’s Today programme that increased overcrowding of boats was part of the reason that the number of arrivals had increased this year.
She said:
I think it’s just totally appalling that you see boats where children are being crushed to death on these overcrowded boats, and yet the boat still continues to the UK.
So we want to strengthen the law to have endangerment of life at sea be part of our laws, so we can prosecute.
Frankly, I want to see everybody who is arriving on a boat where a child’s life has been lost, frankly, should be facing prosecution, either in the UK or in France.
She added:
If you’ve got a boat where we’ve seen all of those people all climb on board that boat, they are putting everybody else’s lives at risk.
If you get on to a boat which is so crowded that a child is crushed to death in the middle of that boat, and if you then refuse rescue from the French authorities who come to the rescue, who end up taking a child’s body and small family members off that boat, and you refuse rescue, I think, frankly, you should face some responsibility and accountability for that.
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Ministers are “looking at a range of different issues” for cutting small boat crossings, the home secretary said as she declined to confirm reports the government was considering a “one in, one out” policy for asylum seekers, reports the PA news agency.
Asked whether the government was looking at such a scheme with European nations, Yvette Cooper told Sky News:
We’ve been looking at a range of different issues, different ways of working – not just with France but with other European countries, other countries like Iraq, countries where we’ve seen these networks of criminal gangs operating.
She added that the government was “looking at different ways of doing returns”.
Cooper also said she hoped France would change its own rules “as swiftly as possible” to allow French police officers to intervene in French waters.
She said:
We’ve seen these just appalling scenes of people just standing in the water, climbing into the boats, French police unable to do anything about it.
So [that is] one of the things I’ve been working very closely with the French interior minister on, and he and I agree those French rules need to change.
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‘I strongly disagree’: Home secretary refutes Zarah Sultana claim that Labour is failing to improve lives
Zarah Sultana has “always taken a very different view” from the government, the home secretary has said.
Responding to the former Labour MP’s announcement that she was co-founding a new party with Jeremy Corbyn, Yvette Cooper told Sky News:
I think she has always taken a very different view to most people in the government on a lot of different things, and that’s for her to do so.
Cooper also rejected the Coventry South MP’s accusation that Labour was failing to improve people’s lives, saying:
I just strongly disagree with her.
The home secretary pointed to falling waiting times in the NHS, the announcement of additional neighbourhood police officers, extending free school meals and strengthening renters’ rights as areas where the government was acting. She said:
These are real changes [that] have a real impact on people’s lives.
As well as Cooper, co-chair of the Conservative party Nigel Huddleston is also on the media rounds this morning.
Zarah Sultana with Jeremy Corbyn in May. He said earlier he wants to offer an alternative to Labour. Photograph: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures/Getty Images
There’s sure to be more reaction today to the news that Sultana has resigned from the Labour party to join Corbyn’s Independent Alliance. But there’s more coming up today:
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A bid to temporarily block the banning of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is set to be heard at the high court on Friday, ahead of a potential legal challenge against the move.
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Councils will have to agree targets to improve the number of children ready for school, under new plans to be announced by the education secretary.
In other recently reported developments:
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Critics of the UK’s role in the Gaza war are considering setting up an independent tribunal if, as expected, Labour blocks a bill tabled by Jeremy Corbyn backing an official inquiry. Government whips are expected to object to the former Labour party leader’s bill in the Commons on Friday, leaving him with few practical options for his legislation to pass.
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Wes Streeting has staked the future of the NHS on a digital overhaul in which a beefed-up NHS app and new hospital league tables are intended to give patients unprecedented control over their care.
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Some farms in England could be taken entirely out of food production under plans to make more space for nature, the environment secretary has said. Speaking at the Groundswell farming festival in Hertfordshire, Steve Reed said a revamp of post-Brexit farming subsidies and a new land use plan would be aimed at increasing food production in the most productive areas and decreasing or completely removing it in the least productive.
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Ministers are closely watching a court case in which Vodafone is alleged to have “unjustly enriched” itself at the expense of franchise operators, and have raised the prospect of a regulatory crackdown on the sector. The small business minister, Gareth Thomas, has said he will “track very carefully” a £120m legal claim brought against Vodafone last year by a group of 62 of about 150 franchise operators.
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Updated at 09.43 BST